Anyway, my class liked those first 40 pages, but my professor thought the characters too cartoonish. He was right, so I sat on that draft and sulked for nine months and then at the beginning of this semester, I took an independent study in which I committed to completing a full draft, starting with a total tear-down and rewrite of the first 40 pages. Thanks to a sleepless Thursday night that turned into a sleepless Friday morning, that draft—just for shits, let’s call it draft 3—is now complete, and it’s actually pretty good, and—here’s where you all start rolling your eyes—I plan on making it this summer as my senior thesis film. This is, of course, impossible for many reasons, most of which I have chosen to ignore.

There are still issues with this draft—it’s rather messy in places, with a few segments that are too short or too long or missing entirely (the love subplot between Dale and Lucy is woefully underwritten in this version, for instance, and the entire script is about 15 pages too long), so one of my top priorities once I get back to Colorado (on May the 14th) is getting a fourth clean-up draft done by the end of the month. Although all the words on the page in this draft are mine, this project was begun in the spirit of collaboration and much of the character and plot is based on writing by Greg, Vvinni, Paul, Ethan and others, and I would like to once again bring this script into the collaborative sphere. I’m not sure how to handle revisions from multiple authors, but I think I’d like to base it around face-to-face meetings wherever possible, now that this thing is actually going into production. As a first step, if you’re thinking about getting involved in the revision, drop me a line and I’ll send the Celtx project file to you.

There will be much, much more about this project here in the near future. For the time being, if you want to help—in any capacity—just let me know.